TY - JOUR
T1 - Trusted? Third? Parties
AU - Jones, G.
N1 - Original article can be found at: http://www.herts.ac.uk/courses/schools-of-study/law/hertfordshire-law-journal/home.cfm
PY - 2004
Y1 - 2004
N2 - To ensure certainty in e-Commerce, a Trusted Third Party can be used to issue certificates, which act as an electronic equivalent to a witness acknowledging and authenticating the identity of the contracting party. The trusted third party issues the certificate which correlates the contracting party to a unique public key, which in turn is used in creating the digital signature. However, the European legislation, in particular, Directive 1999/93/EC on a Community framework for electronic signatures fails to ensure that the certificate is issued by a third party. Therefore a party can act as both a contracting party and a certificate issuer. This causes a conflict of interest, should a dispute arise, as authentication has not been performed by a party independent to those contracting.
AB - To ensure certainty in e-Commerce, a Trusted Third Party can be used to issue certificates, which act as an electronic equivalent to a witness acknowledging and authenticating the identity of the contracting party. The trusted third party issues the certificate which correlates the contracting party to a unique public key, which in turn is used in creating the digital signature. However, the European legislation, in particular, Directive 1999/93/EC on a Community framework for electronic signatures fails to ensure that the certificate is issued by a third party. Therefore a party can act as both a contracting party and a certificate issuer. This causes a conflict of interest, should a dispute arise, as authentication has not been performed by a party independent to those contracting.
M3 - Article
VL - 2
JO - Hertfordshire Law Journal
JF - Hertfordshire Law Journal
IS - 1
ER -